270 feared dead in Iranian air crash

7:52PM GMT 19 Feb 2003

All 270 people on board an Iranian military aircraft are feared dead after it crashed in the south of the country, according to state television.

Officials said the Antonov airliner came down close to the town of Shahdad, 50 miles from its destination in Kerman at 5.30pm local time (1400 GMT). It was travelling from the southern city of Zahedan.

It is thought that most of the dead were military personnel and included several soldiers from the elite Revolutionary Guard.

Earlier reports said the plane was a passenger plane carrying 290 people.

The crash, whose cause in unknown, is the second serious air accident in Iran in the past three months.

In December more than 40 people died when a Ukranian plane crashed into a mountain as it was preparing to land at an airport in Isfahan, 250 miles south of Tehran.

Last February, 117 people were killed when an Iranian passenger plane crashed into snow-covered mountains in the west of the country.